A Tuesday in Toronto

Earlier this week I took a little whirlwind, 2-day trip to Toronto with my lovely friend Sydney. We drove down on Tuesday morning and spent the afternoon wandering around downtown, doing some shopping and eating Thai food. Dundas Square was beautifully lit up for the Holidays so we had to stop for some pictures. Shopping and wandering and Thai food all seem like reasons enough to make the 2 hour trip to Toronto, however if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram or even on Facebook, you may have seen me post this picture a while ago.This my friends, was the real reason for our mid-week trip to the city. 

If you know me at all, you will know I love Bon Iver and have loved Bon Iver, with all of my heart, for years. I love For Emma, Forever Ago, and like all of his fans, waited patiently (or not so patiently) until this past year when he released Bon Iver, Bon Iver. Currently, Bon Iver holds 15 of the spots in my 25 most played list on iTunes. I’m literally obsessed.

You guys, it is just the most beautiful music. I can’t say enough about it.

They played one show earlier in the summer and it sold out so quickly I didn’t have a chance to get tickets. I was devastated. Then the Live Nation App on my phone (loooove iPhones) told me that he was playing another show. I waited up after a night shift and got tickets the minute I could. Thankfully I got two. And not just two tickets, two killer seats.

Fast forward to Tuesday night.

We get into Massey Hall (amaaaazing venue) and I literally start having difficulty breathing. I don`t remember much of the opening act except that she was super cute, British, and was amazing at the guitar.

Then out comes Justin and his band.I got chills as soon as they started playing Perth, and had chills for the next two hours. It`s hard to pick out highlights, but Flume is high up on the list. I cried.  I could not have helped myself if my life depended on it. I can`t even tell you how amazing it was. I simply can`t.

If you get the chance to go and see Bon Iver play live, do it. do it! DO IT! (yes that is me shouting at you)

I paid good money for our seats. Knowing what I know now, I would have paid at least double what I paid to go again.

The night kind of feels like a dream, I still get chills when I think about it and I honestly have not been able to listen to any music since. Nor do I want to.

For now, I will just live with my memories of the best concert I have ever been too.

FYI

I have cute (albeit, sometimes drunk) friends.

If anyone ever wants to send me cutie texts feel free :)

xo J

PS. I love youI love yarn. I got out these pretties and my needles again this week. I dunno, there’s something about fall that just makes me want to curl up under a blanket with a hot drink, a good movie or album and just knit knit knit all day long.

a teeny weekend getaway.

This weekend I celebrated the last weekend of my last summer holidays ever (I started my final year of nursing school today) with a little weekend roadtrip to spend the weekend with some lovelies.

What up P.A.?! (that one’s for you Katie. ha!)

Anyways a little while ago, my friend Vanessa emailed me and told me she was collecting gifts for a little surprise baby shower she was planning with Steven for Katie. I responded jokingly with something along the lines of, “Well I should come and give Katie the gift of my presence but since that could never happen, I’ll make you something”. But a few days later, I asked myself “Why couldn’t I go and give Katie the gift of my presence at her shower?” So I did. Friday I took the drive down through upstate NY (gorgeous drive by the way – the leaves are starting to change colours!!) to Vanessa’s. I arrived at like 9 on Friday night and Vanessa and I spent the night making crafty decorations for the shower and consumed numerous glasses of delicious boxed wine deciding that it is indeed Refreshing White that is better than Crisp White and not the other way around.

Saturday we spent the morning conspiring further with Steven and putting together the last of the prep for the shower. We suprised Katie 100% and had a lovely little shower made all the better by the gifts so many lovely people sent.

Then we made our way to the York fair for some fair rides and games and cheesy pirate shows, we saw Vanessa’s space for her new cafe, The Green Bean Roasting Co., I played catch with Paisley and we finished our day with a yummy dinner at Bistro 19.

Katie and Steven are super lovely and kind and just good people. They are such a cute little family.

Later that night, after Katie and Steven left for home,  Vanessa and I spent the night playing cards, listening to and chit-chatting about music and of course, enjoying more wine, this time a lovely Canadian(!!) red blend provided by moi.

Then Sunday morning I made the drive back home to Canada but not before a two hour detour provided by my GPS (grr!). The weekend was amazing and I’m so glad I decided to go. Katie said her shower was better than her wedding. How sweet! It just made my heart happy I could be apart of it. Vanessa and I decided she is the cutest pregnant lady and I’m saying it now, she has the cutest little family. Her and Steven are super nice and lovely and just really good people. And Paisley is just darling.

Vanessa, is a lovely hostess, who knows about good wine (she taught me what a punt is and thereby increasing my two-step wine selection process to a three-step one. ha!) and a hell of a lot about music. She sent me a little packed lunch for the road and I just want to put her in my pocket.

Thanks for hanging out with me you guys!

I’m so happy I’ve made such amazing friends (yes you!!) through this whole internet/blogging/scrapbooking business and that now I have met some of them in real life. Its always so amazing to me how kind and sweet people are around here.

I looove youuu!

Ps. I love you via

pps. because i fail at life. or at least at taking pictures, these are the only ones I have from the trip and they were all taken on the drive home. ha! (heyy! i’m still getting used to having a phone with a good camera and I neglected to bring my point and shoot) but, never fear, there were a few other pictures taken throughout the weekend that I’m sure will surface in the near future.

xo

a belated happy birthday.

Just wanted to pop in and say a quick belated birthday to one of my besties and to my favourite roommate ever! I was unfortunately unable to attend the festivities (including delicious sushi – jealousss) this past weekend however I was pleased to find that she was still able to have a good time despite my absence.

While I was trying to put together this post a-I had a fantastic time looking through the old photos of our times together and b-I realized that we have like zero pictures together (how is that even possible after living together for two years).  This MUST be remedied this year.

I did discover a few things about our pictures together.

1) The ones we do have one of us looks like a fool, take the one above for instance –although with that one I am intentionally trying to look that way (its my Napolean Dynamite face).

2) Of the photos of just us, there is a disproportionate number of them from various Halloween events (probably three quarters)(take the above photo for instance).

3) You seem to have a fascination with trying on my glasses – including those that are a part of my Halloween costumes. Take this one for instance:Possibly one of my favourite pictures ever (and my second favourite picture of you wearing glasses ever – you know my first favourite).

Anyways Happy Birthday Charlie!! I love you and here’s to two more fun filled years!

xoo

Ps. I love you These retro future ads by  Moma Propaganda (via Dude Craft via Laughing Squid) are funny, charming and well, brilliant.

i should be sleeping.

Buuut instead I’m popping in to quickly tell you that I’m featured over at Steph’s blog today.  So first of all, if you are here from that profile, WELCOME! I hope you’ll come back again.She has this really cool feature called Inspiration profile where she interviews people who inspire her. If it isn’t cool enough that Steph wanted to feature me (which it is), I’ve joined the likes of people who inspire me such as Vee and Tina who have also been featured. I’m super honoured. So thank you Steph for asking me to do this!!! You are sweet :)

For the curious, you can check out the feature right here to learn a few things you may not have known about me.

Happy Tuesday!

Ps I love you

Sundays are for Picnics.

Today we packed a lunch and headed to the park for a little family picnic. The perfect activity for a sunny Sunday afternoon.

Tonight, like last night, I’m going to finish my night with some scrapbooking.

How was your weekend?

Jer

Ps I love you. Katie’s collages are so fantastic and incredibly inspiring.

Flavour Flaves

Keeping with the informal scrapbooking theme I started yesterday by sharing my layout from last weekend, today I just wanted to give a shout out/share to one of my absolute favourite challenge blogs out there – The Dares. I don’t remember when I first came across this site and actually I think before I knew of the website I knew of the book – either way, if you are looking for a creative challenge (whether that be for scrapbooking or not) check out this site.

Some of the girls on the DT are some of my favourite scrappers – Jen, Kristina and Vee. Now that I’ve been around the site for a while I have some new faves from the DT – Tina and Jamaica and I am lucky enough to call some of these girls friends. The challenges are simple – just the way I like them so I can take it whatever direction I want.

Seriously, check it out!!!Tina – Dare 145  Jen – Dare 142 Vee – Dare 156Jen – Dare 136Jamaica – Dare 135   Vee – Dare 153 Jamaica – Dare 151 Vee – Dare 131 KC – Dare 150 Tina – Dare 127

Jen – Dare 147

Ok seriously, I need to stop. I could keep going but I’d use up all of my bandwidth on one post ( I really could) lol. But seriously? How amazing are those pages??? Promise me you’ll go and check them out.

The challenges are rad. The DT is even more rad. I just think they need a boy on the DT ;) Eh?

What do you think? lol Hey. . .I can dream, right?

Ps I love you found here

Monday Monday.

hi. hi.

You are probably reading this and I am either doing one of two things: sleeping or in class. ha.  Either way, welcome to day one of my goal to blog everyday this week. (Which I will accomplish since posts for all 5 days this week are already written. Thank God for post-publishing)

I’m going to be sharing a bunch of different things with you all throughout the week but today is going to be quick and dirty. I just have a few things I want to share with you to start your week off. 

First of all this weekend the lovely lovely Miss James from Bleubird (one of the prettiest blogs ever!! seriously) posted the second instalment of her Show and Tell feature.

If you don’t know what it is (though, it’s pretty much how it sounds) you can check out that post right here. I was lucky enough to participate this round. I shared one of my vintage Hardy Boys collection. I collect these and the Nancy Drew’s from the 50s and 60s and if I’m really lucky I can find them from the 30s when they first came out. Elise shared a Nancy Drew book that is in her collection. I thought it was cute/funny that we shared the same thing so I went over to check her blog and was pleasantly surprised at how lovely it was. So quick shout out to Elise my collection twin. You should go and check her out.

Also, I got a lot of traffic from Bleubird this weekend so if you’re visiting from there, welcome and I hope you come back and play again sometime.

This weekend I got a lot of scrapbooking done. Three layouts might not sound like a lot for the whole weekend, but considering I am a really slow scrapper ( I often have layouts sit on my desk for at least a week before I finish them) three is a monumental number.   And a sneak peek of one that I finished tonight after the daylight  had disappeared and as a result did not get a good photograph of.(sneaky right?) I’ll post updated pics of this layout later on this week so stay tuned for those.

I decided this weekend that I need to do multiple layouts in a row more often because (in my opinion) they kept getting better as the weekend went on (note: layouts appear in the order they were created). I miss scrapbooking a lot when I don’t get a chance to do it. Its absolutely one of my favourite creative things to do and I have met so many great people because of it. Its really very close to my heart.

I really need to get my hands on a reliable camera. Its hard to scrapbook when you don’t have photos to scrapbook. ha! imagine that. My last camera I had died without so much as any hint of warning, never to work again and the one I had before that turns on with a dial (Kodak. anyone? anyone?) Anyways over the years that dial has gotten sticky and sometimes turns and sometimes doesn’t. It is hard, as one might imagine, to turn on the camera when the dial doesn’t work. So it is unreliable, and also it is huuuge (we’re talking like 6 years old people) so I don’t generally use it for anything except to photograph layouts and stuff. Aaaanyways, that’s just my little rant. I’m keeping my eyes out for a very reasonably priced Rebel so if anyone has any links I’d love to see them.

Finally on a kind of serious note I just wanted to make a quick comment on what is going on in Haiti currently.  Most of you are probably unaware of this, except for the few family members that read this blog, that Haiti is pretty close to my heart. My mom works for an organization called MFMI and their partner OMS and she works to co-ordinate short term mission trips all over the world but probably 90% of the teams that she organizes go into Haiti. My parents have went to Haiti on a missions trip a few years ago and they have seen firsthand (and I have seen second-hand through pictures they took and stories they brought back) what a beautiful country and how beautiful the people are there.  My parents have made friends with the missionaries in Haiti and luckily no one on the team from MFMI/OMS was harmed in the quake.

The organization has two buildings in Port-au-Prince where the earthquake hit. The villa, where short term teams stay when they go (luckily there were none from OMS in the country this week) and a church. The villa is relatively fine with only a small amount of damage but from what we currently know there is nothing left of the church.

As I mentioned this is very close to home for my family so I am urging all of you reading to do whatever you can within the means that you have. You can donate to OMS by following this link here. Your donation to OMS will go towards providing food and water to the people who have been affected by the earthquake. There is a huge list here of other organizations that you can donate to if that is more convenient for you. My friend Elsie is auctioning off this painting with 100% of the proceeds going towards Haiti relief. A lot of the time I take for granted the situation I find myself in from day to day – this puts a lot of things into perspective for me. I am honoured to be able to help out in a situation like this. I hope you are able to help out as well.

xo Jer

this past week – its a long one.

i don’t know what it is, but i always seem to blog on friday evenings. hmm. just an observation.

well i have been planning to blog literally all week. everyday i was like, hmmm i’ll blog today, but then didn’t. i always seem to blog on friday evenings. i don’t know what it is but that always seems to be my blogging day.

moving on. today i had lunch and spent the afternoon with this beauty. i had such a lovely time (and also a delicious grilled veggie sandwich but that’s beside the point). this is my oldest friend, we’ve been friends since grade one and it always feels comfortable, easy when we get together. we started by going for lunch and coffee. we both had chai lattes and then finished with irish cream iced coffees. we then browsed around town a bit with our iced coffees enjoying the sun. ps it has been so so nice here this past week. i think summer may just be here to stay for a while.

i scored some yummy thrifted yarn today as well as some good vintage fabrics (in yummy fall plaids) i have a few projects in mind for these things – more about this later. i was shopping specifically for nice fall-ish colours. i only got one teeny bit of yellow yarn and i would have liked some nicer, deeper, more mustardy yellows but hey, beggars can’t be choosers right? i did however get a ton of balls of grey yarn. i don’t know why but just kept picking them up, it is so pretty – grey yarn is definitely my favorite colour of yarn.

also this past week i secured my spot here: i am so so excited and it is the reason for my fall yarn shopping and my fall fabric shopping. if you read this blog at all you know how much i loved the last class that rachel and elsie did and the projects look so amazing this time around i couldn’t miss out on this one. also, it is the fall class and again, if you read this blog you know how much i love fall. aanyways, the combo of those things plus the amazing experience i had last time made it very easy for me to dish out the money to pay for this class. also, if you know the font in that banner would you link me up? i love it.

this past week i also started uploading to the SIStv gallery again. i started my account back in the spring but never uploaded anything to the gallery. i started uploading again this week and i was very warmly welcomed. so if you are visiting from SIS welcome! and please come back any time.

also regarding sis my sweet friend jen got some lovely news this week. big congrats to her.

this week i applied for my student loan and this morning i payed my tuition. it went through this evening and i am now nearly $6000 poorer than i was when i woke up this morning.

this week i was watching jimmy fallon and saw this:

so amazing. i’ve listened to it too many times to count.

also on the youtube subject there is a new where the wild things are trailer. watch it here. it is even better than the first one. i am so excited for this movie to come out later this year. so so excited.

i have a new favorite blog – terrible, yellow eyes. it is a bunch of artists who are making projects in their medium of choice inspired by where the wild things are. it is absolutely amazing. some of my faves:

so magical. i especially love that last one. definitely following that blog now. i will be checking it every day, you can count on that. after all the where the wild things are inspiration today i went looking for my copy of the book, however i can’t find it anywhere so i have had someone read it to me here on youtube like 10 times today. ha! i’m a bit obsessed.

tonight, i will be rolling more yarn into balls (because its so much prettier than the rolls they come in) and i hope to do some scrapping. gooood night.

A Decade

Earlier this week, as many of you know, I turned 20. It wasn’t too exciting around here, I thought I had to work on my birthday, but then I didn’t so I didn’t have anything planned for it. My day was spent doing a few little projects around here – fun projects which I will share soon. And I had dinner with the family followed by amaaazing coconut lemon cupcakes (just fyi – i’m a huuuuge fan of anything lemon flavoured etc.)

While the real world goings on were nothing exciting – in blog there was a 24 hour celebration in honour of my birthday and also for the birthdays of my almost birthday twin –Margot; and my real birthday twin – Jamie (at least I tell myself it was for us). The party started on May 31 around 11pm when there were a number of us blog bffs online waiting for Elsie’s blog party to start. So we decided to have a pre-party. So we chatted it up and kept each other awake and pumped until the real party got started. During that chat probably laughed out loud –like a real throw your head back belly laugh- a good 76 times. So funny – it was a really good start to my birthday. Then Elsie conducted her blog party all day long and I was soo pleasantly surprised to find my inspiration wall on Elsie’s blog in Holly’s awesome challenge post.

To top off the blog party (which was a visual inspiration overload) I won one of the giveaways. I promptly (ok not promptly I just did it today) sent my shipping info off to Erin and now I am patiently waiting for my little prize. All through the party Margot was cracking me up with her party comments. “pass me the chips” then later “i said . . .PASS THE CHIPS”. haha too funny. The blog party was so fun. I told Elsie she should have one every June 1st so we’ll see. However if there is no blog party next year on my bday maybe I’ll have to host my own blog party. Who knows.

Aaaanyways I’m here chit chatting about the blog party and the majority of people reading this were probably there so I’m here preaching to the choir about how awesome it was. What I do want to say is a big *thank you* to all of my blog friends for making my not so exciting real world birthday a super exciting cyber world birthday. So thank you for leaving me blog messages, tweets and posts on my facebook wall. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Twenty is good so far. I feel like it is going to be a good year. Any advice from those of you who have already seen your twentieth year?

In other less paragraph-y, more point form-ish news:

- this kiddo had his senior prom on the weekend. whaaat? i can’t believe he will be finished highschool in less than a month. i’ll try to convince him to do a wee grad photo sesh. however if you know my brother you’ll know that will be nearly impossible.

- i have a huuuge craving to go to the beach. especially after Samantha’s beach adventure and this lovely pic by Vee

- yay for the good response to the vlog. i still haven’t watched it even with all the positive praise. i’m afraid it would be weird to watch myself talk. even weirder than it was filming the vlog. maybe i’ll make it a regular thing. . . like monthly or bi-monthly? or maybe you’ll get sick of watching me? ahh we’ll see.

-also i started a new creative project this week. i will share it later so stay tuned.

xo jer